Hard tissues clinical applications

The initial inflammatory reactions associated with chitosan application to hard and soft tissues need to be controlled before it can be considered for clinical application as scaffold. Further, as it takes too long for biodegradation of implanted chitosan in vivo, generally chitosan is concluded to be not suitable for the scaffold for degenerative medicine in especially dental pulp tissue surrounding hard tissue. 

The key to the successful clinical application for hard tissue repair using the ECM-derived tissues is the preservation of bioactive factors and the elimination of any immunogenic substance remained in the source tissue during the decellularization or demineralized procedures. However, the current acellular methods normally cause loss of bioactive factors and/or the destruction of the ultrastructure due to the extreme conditions experienced during the process (Zimmermann and Moghaddam, 2011 Badylak et al., 2011). Therefore, further optimization of the ECM scaffolds is required in the following studies so as to ensure the safety and effectiveness of these promising scaffolds. 

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